The number of immigrants moving to Michigan more than replaced residents fleeing to other states in 2024, with foreign born residents increasing in nearly every county.
Data released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday show Michigan’s population increase of 57,000, or 0.6%, was driven primarily by immigration, offsetting out migration and deaths outnumbering births in 72 of 83 counties.
While Michigan’s population estimate of 10.1 million marks an all-time high, negative net domestic migration persists as a serious issue that’s predicted to result in a declining population in coming decades.
“The Census Report for Michigan is bleak,” John Rakolta Jr., co-chair of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Growing Michigan Together Council, told The Detroit News. “If you want to take solace in a one-year improvement when nothing structural has changed, go ahead. If there had been some structural change, I would feel more optimistic. But in all reality, nothing has changed.”
The new Census data provides a county-level look at population trends across Michigan, building on data released in December that showed deaths exceeded births in the state by 2,855 last year and net domestic migration at negative 7,656.
The new data reveals population increases in 55 counties, declines in 27, and one – Iosco County – with zero net growth. Counties with large concentrations of immigrants including Oakland, Wayne and Macomb were among the fastest growing between July 2023 and July 2024, accounting for an increase of more than 30,000.
That’s in line with national trends, which showed a similar dynamic in 958 counties in 47 states, including most in the Midwest, Michigan Advance reports.
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Kent and Ottawa counties also posted a combined increase of more than 10,500, while Washtenaw, Ingham and Kalamazoo counties each increased by more than 1,000, according to The News.
“Increasingly, population growth in metro areas is being shaped by international migration,” Kristie Wilder, a demographer in the Census Bureau’s Population Division, told the news site. “While births continue to contribute to overall growth, rising net international migration is offsetting the ongoing net domestic outmigration we see in many of these areas.”
Population projections from the Michigan Center for Data and Analytics last year predict “Michigan’s population is projected to increase by approximately 231,000 people (2.3 percent) from 2022 through 2034, and then decline to 9,906,000 people by 2050,” representing an overall decline of about 128,000 or 1.3% by the middle of the century.
“Decreasing births and increasing deaths are substantial contributors to the state’s projected slow growth and population decline,” according to the MCDA. “These birth and death trends are projected even if the state has net positive migration of working- and family-age migrants.”
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“As natural decrease becomes more severe, Michigan’s future population growth will be reliant on continually higher levels of net positive migration,” the center reports.
The declines are projected despite an expected national population increase of roughly 8% by 2050, when country-wide numbers are forecasted to decline.
“Michigan’s greatest strength is its people – and we are losing them,” according to a report from Whitmer’s Growing Michigan Together Council. “Today Michigan is 49th out of 50 in terms of population growth. We’re failing to prepare our people for the jobs of the future and failing to ensure Michigan is the place current and future Michiganders want to call home.”
While data from the Census Bureau, United Van Lines, and other studies have documented the migration of Michiganders to more prosperous states, Whitmer has worked to remake Michigan as “the state of choice for many newcomer populations” with $500 per month taxpayer-funded housing rental subsidies, $738,000 for “capacity building and outreach” to immigrant communities, $1 million in legal assistance for “newcomers,” and other spending.
A report from the American Immigration Council last year suggests those efforts could further boost a Michigan immigrant population that’s growing nearly 10 times faster than the overall population.
The data shows a total of 687,700 immigrants resided in Michigan in 2022, representing about 7% of the total population, including 102,700 in the country illegally.
Over the preceding decade, the immigrant population increased by 14.5%, compared to 1.5% for Michigan in general, adding 87,000 immigrants to the Great Lakes State since 2012, according to the report.
The influx accounted for 57.7% of the state’s growth during that time.
While Whitmer has focused on accelerating that trend, the number of Michigan residents struggling paycheck-to-paycheck has increased by nearly 200,000 since she took office.
When Whitmer took office in 2019, the number of Michiganders who could not afford a “survival budget” was just beginning to wane for the first time since the Great Recession.
By 2022, the number of Michigan households overall had increased by 2%, but the percentage of them struggling to survive had increased by 13%, according to a United for ALICE report.
Overall, 41% of the state’s 4 million households are struggling to afford the basics, while it’s more than half in 11 counties and nearly 80% in some cities.